Elle s'appelait Sarah (2010)
Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner

Film Review

France's shameful involvement in the deportation of Jews during the Second World War comes under the spotlight in this compelling drama, based on a best-selling novel by Tatiana De Rosnay.  Elle s'appelait Sarah (a.k.a. Sarah's Key) tackles the same subject that was covered in Roselyne Bosch's La Rafle (2010), released seven months previously, namely the infamous July 1942 roundup of Jews in Paris by the French police.  However, it is a very different kind of film to Bosch's, not merely depicting historical events but exploring our relationship with the past in a subtle and thought-provoking way.  It is a film that reminds us of the necessity for facing up to the horrors and misfortunes of the past, no matter how painful that may be.  Even today, most French people find it hard to accept their country's complicity in the Nazi Holocaust, and it was only a few decades ago that the grimmer truths about the Occupation became widely known.  What distinguishes Elle s'appelait Sarah from the recent spate of films about the Holocaust is that it attempts to bridge the past and the present and shows how this terrible episode in human history continues to haunt our collective and individual consciences.  Just why should we feel so emotionally hung up on something that took place seventy years ago and in which none of us played any part?  This singular film goes some way to answering that question.

There is little to connect this film with director Gilles Paquet-Brenner's previous work, which to date has been pretty variable, to say the least.  After a promising debut feature Les Jolies choses (2001), Paquet-Brenner has notched up an impressive list of box office and critical failures, including Gomez & Tavarès (2003) and UV (2007).  Elle s'appelait Sarah is an altogether different proposition, a focussed, well-constructed drama that is not only sensitively scripted but also directed with restraint, sincerity and the occasional stylistic flourish.  The sequences set in the famous velodrome are particularly graphic and provide a brutally visceral impression of the suffering and despair that was endured by the victims of the roundup.  By interweaving two parallel story strands - one depicting a young Jewish girl's experience of the roundup, the other following a journalist as she attempts to unravel the full story of this girl sixty years on - the film reminds us how intimately bound we are to the past, how we can never escape its grip.

Admittedly, the film does have its shortcomings - a storyline that stretches credibility a little too far in places and dialogue that doesn't quite ring true in a few crucial scenes.  Such failings are partly redeemed by Paquet-Brenner's slick and imaginative direction, but the film's main strength is an absorbing central performance from Kristin Scott Thomas at her near-best.  As the driven woman Julia who becomes locked in an obsessive quest that threatens to wreck her personal life and career, Scott Thomas gives the film its robust emotional core, and it is through her that we see why the Holocaust continues to haunt us and instill in us all a profound sense of collective guilt.  As first, the heroine's globetrotting investigation has a touch of the absurd about it, but as we are slowly drawn into her world the film begins to acquire a deeper meaning.  Julia's personal investigation is prompted not by the usual bout of mid-life crisis, but by something far more fundamental, a natural human reaction to an event that is so appalling it transcends the barriers of time, space and culture.  Julia's efforts to find Sarah mirror the latter's futile attempt to rescue her brother - both are driven by an overwhelming and equally misplaced sense of guilt.  Sarah's key promises deliverance but what it really brings is a far greater prize: enlightenment.  Only by facing the truth of the Holocaust, the horror locked away in the cupboard, can we discover who we are and what we must do to avoid similar atrocities in the future.

Film Synopsis

Julia Jarmond is an American journalist and writer who has been living in France for the past twenty years with her husband Bertrand.  The latter is a successful architect who is presently restoring several buildings which his family acquired by somewhat dubious means during the Second World War.  This fact leads Julie to take an interest in France's treatment of Jews during the Occupation -  in particular the terrible Vel d'Hiv episode.  It was in 1942 that, acting under instructions from the Vichy government, the French police rounded up thousands of Jews and detained them in inhuman conditions at the Winter Velodrome in Paris, before sending them away to the concentration camps.  Appalled by what she uncovers, Julia develops an affinity for one of the victims of the roundup, a 10-year-old girl named Sarah.  What began as a routine piece of research for an article turns into a traumatic personal affair for Julia as she lifts the lid on a long buried family secret...